I've loved Lauren Beukes since reading The Shining Girls years ago. In this book, we meet mother and son duo Cole and Miles, as they navigate across the US, in the aftermath of a man destroying virus. Miles is one of the few precious males left in the world, and everyone from the government to his scheming aunt Billie, wants a piece of him. His mother Cole will stop at nothing to protect him and get them both safely back to South Africa. I enjoyed this book. It was super fast paced and intriguing. It was not quite in the same vain as her other books, but it was still a decent read and I will continue to read anything by Lauren Beukes.

My favorite thing about this novel is the characters that we were introduced to. But I feel like that is Post-Apocalyptic Fiction 101 - you have to care about the characters in order to be invested in the future they will build. Good or bad or somewhere in-between, I was interested in all of our characters - but the sister dynamics were obviously the most interesting and most well-crafted here.

My least favorite thing about this novel was actually the narrative style with the time jumps. They were jarring and threw off the pacing for me.

Overall this is an interesting take on a world without men that I will recommend to patrons looking for a new post-apocalyptic read!

After a pandemic that kills the majority of the men on the planet, survivors such a thirteen-year-old Miles become a lucrative commodity. On the run from the government and his aunt Billie who made a black market deal to sell him to the highest bidder, he and his mother, Cole, seek a safe haven, while doing their best to keep his gender hidden.

It took me awhile to finish this book, which I started in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, but I’m glad I did. The story shifts from the past and the present and alternates between mother, sister, and son’s points of view, showing the complicated relationship dynamics between the triad.

This dystopian story is a bit more of a thriller than a science fiction epic, as this future world has adapted to the shortage of men and women. Casinos and theme parks have opened, and women have moved into roles traditionally held by men.

The gender-specific focus reminded me a bit of SLEEPING BEAUTIES by Stephen and Owen King, but AFTERLAND felt more focused and intimate with the concentration on the perspectives of the three family members. Some of my favorite moments are when Cole and Miles join a religious group as a way to hide in plain sight as they attempt to make a connection that will help them flee the United States. The sisters and their weird rituals are a delight.

Being in Billie’s head is enlightening as we have a front row seat to her motivations for using her nephew as a means to obtain financial security. She quickly became my favorite character as she proved her ability to survive over and over, reminding me of a reference in the book to her resilience, where Cole recalls her husband saying that after an apocalypse, the only survivors would be Billie, Keith Richards, and the cockroaches. But of course he turns out being wrong about Keith, as few men survive this particular pandemic.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thanks to Mulholland Books, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hackett Book Group, Inc, for providing an Advance Reader Copy.

Beautiful Perfect. Wonderful. I have never been let down by a book from this author. Recommend! Highly!

I’m judging a 2020 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

I don't have particular lines I can point to here, just that it was spooky and that's what you want in a thriller.

Lauren Beukes has done it again. I swear I will read anything this woman writes! Afterland was a dang masterpiece. Read it and you won't be sorry. The opposite of sorry is what you'll be!

I’m consistently amazed by Lauren Beukes’ creativity and ability to tell new kinds of stories. This has a similar premise to Y: The Last Man in that a global event (this time, a virus that somehow causes prostate cancer) wipes out almost all people on earth born biologically male. The story focuses on Cole and her son, Miles, who were temporarily living in America with Cole’s husband when things got really bad. Her husband dies, but Miles hasn’t been affected by the virus in the way that almost every other biological male in the world was, and Cole wants to take him home to South Africa but is stopped by law enforcement and charged with trafficking because immune males are so uncommon that they are heavily protected and forced to undergo all kinds of medical and genetic testing. Cole’s sister Billie, who has pretty sinister motives, finds Cole and Miles and she works with Cole to plan an escape from the fancy facility they live in, which is basically a prison for families with surviving males. Billie’s underlying plan is revealed and Cole nearly kills her, escaping with Miles on her own and starting a long trek across the country in search of a way home. I really liked the structure with parallel narratives - Cole’s perspective, Miles’ (dressed as a girl and going by the name Mila) perspective, and Billie’s perspective, with bits of past recollections of all three characters spliced in. A well paced and engaging book blending sci fi and thriller elements very well.

DNF @ 61%

I was provided an e-copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.

This book is well written and interesting, it just isn't my cup of coffee right now. I'm trying not to force myself through books I'm not enjoying, as that will only bog down my overall reading and make it a chore to do so.

If the blurb of this one looks good, I'd recommend giving it a try. It'll hit the right chords for someone, just didn't for me this time around.

#ItsNotYouItsMe

Some books are just a bit too prescient, but that is not the fault of the book! Lauren Beukes' Afterland is a book centered on a global pandemic, but that's where the 2020 comparisons mostly end. This is a fiercely feminist tale that looks at what the world would be like if a virus eliminated the majority of men. It reminded me of The Future Home of the Living God a bit. While it's not a derivative novel, there were some elements of story development that I found to be a bit unresolved.

Many thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book. All thoughts are my own.

It's really hard to read a book about pandemics and dystopian futures right now in 2020, but this one is worth the pain. A terrible pandemic has decimated the population of men in the world. South African mother Cole is stuck in the United States and determined to get back home to Africa and keep her son Miles safe. Dressed as Mila, the pair make a harrowing escape and try to get back, all the while being chased by Cole's ne'er-do-well sister Billie, who is determined to cash in on Miles's worth with her gang of thugs.

The premise sounded awesome. I reeeeeeally wanted to enjoy this book. But alas, I couldn't get into it. It wasn't as serious as I thought it would be, or as action packed/fast paced as the write up led us to believe. The characters talk in jokey/tongue-in-cheek dialogue like they're going on a fun road trip to visit a family member, instead of being on the run for their lives. Because of that, I just couldn't get into the story or care about the characters, so I couldn't finish it. Maybe it's just me, and maybe this will be for someone else.

Hmmm… I found Afterland to be quite a difficult book to review I liked the idea of a dystopian where the subjugation of the female is flipped and it men who are the ones who need to fight for their autonomy but there was just something in Afternland that was missing for me. I felt bored reading it the plot just slogged along especially when reading about Cole and her son, the only real interesting parts was Billie Coles psychotic sister, only to see what happened to her. Overall Afterland has a good premise and seems to fit the times it just didn’t live up to my alternate dystopian dreams.

Reading about a fictional pandemic during an actual pandemic is a non-trivial ask, particularly when even the most devoted readers find themselves with barely enough attention span for a tweet. If you have the fortitude, Lauren Beukes’ eerily prescient “Afterland” is not only precisely a book of our time, but also an engaging thriller. An oncovirus quickly sweeps the globe, killing most of the men and boys around the world. Cole and her extended family, South Africans, find themselves stuck in the United States as her son is one of the few men to survive.

Twelve-year-old Miles and his mother are kept in a government holding facility that serves as a very comfortable jail, but Cole wants to return to her home in South Africa. Although there’s considerably less world-building in “Afterland” than in, say, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Beukes provides fascinating details into a world without men, such as the needed training in PMdFs, or “Previously Male-dominated Fields. Agriculture. Electrical engineering. Plumbing. Medicine.” At least in this apocalyptic world, women are finally able to break into the lucrative field of plumbing. Free from the constraints of the patriarchy, most women, grieving half the world’s population, trudge along in the existing social and political systems.

Cole and Miles eventually go on the run, with Miles naturally disguised as a young girl, Mila. Cole’s own sister, Billie, pursues the pair, with the nefarious intentions of aiding in selling her nephew (or at least his sperm) at great profit. Poor Billie hasn’t had an easy life compared to her sister, and her dogged pursuit often vacillates between the fantasy of retiring in peace with her sister and nephew and alternately experiencing the luxury that will flow her way when she starts harvesting a twelve-year-old’s sperm (a possibility that even the morally bankrupt Billie is never fully able to visualize). On the run from both the U.S. government and Billie, Cole and Miles fall in with that most dangerous of post-apocalyptic groups (with the possible exception the one in Octavia Butler’s “The Parable of the Sower”): religious zealots.

This particular group, all women, of course, are from The Church of All Sorrows, and claim that after the remaining humans indicate that they are sorry for their sins and return to womanly virtues—their slogan: “Modest. Nurturing. Supplication.”— that God will reintroduce men to the world. “Neon ninjas, with veils across their mouths and their heads covered. Their outfits are printed with words in big bubble letters, bright pink and green and acid yellow. Not words. One word. ‘Sorry.’ Printed in a migraine of fonts and colors. ‘Sorry-sorry-sorry-sorry.’” The apologizing nuns are mostly harmless, busing across the U.S. on their way to a convention, stopping to pass out pamphlets to crowds and recruit converts along the way. Miles quickly becomes a willing and strident convert, while his mother is less enamored, particularly after a harrowing induction ritual.

In this world without men, women don’t rise to the occasion and build a better land, they fill the vacancies and proceed as usual. A nun tells an impressionable Miles/Mila, “Women are weak, baby. You remember that. We’re weak and we’re helpless, and we need God to lead us because the men are gone.” Heaven forbid!

Afterland
By Lauren Beukes
Mulholland Books, 416 pages

I am all for a dystopian, pandemic novel with a twist, but unfortunately, Afterland didn’t deliver and I abandoned it at halfway through. The virus only affects males, killing off all but a very small proportion of the population that is immune. Cole’s pre-teen son is one of these, but he’s now a science experiment for the government. Plus, three years after the pandemic the black market for sperm donors is thriving. So, Cole is on the run with him.

Given that it takes authors years to write their novels the details in Afterland are so prescient they made me queasy, from the already real—no hand sanitizer left in stores—to abandoned homes and massive secret government forces. I could have powered through that, but the plot meandered. There were villains and the hunted, but where any of them were going and why was not clear enough to keep me reading.

I read several reviews of this book before writing this because, having finished the book, I don't really know what to say about it. The reviews didn't help, lol. I don't think this is one I'll be thinking about months from now, but it definitely has merit - a crisp, clear voice and a better than it sounds premise are standouts.

In particular, there is one scene towards the end that made me forget all of the previous goodness. Let’s face it. The entire concept of Miles forgetting or ignoring the fact that he is a male made me scratch my head. I understand the reasons for this but I don’t buy them. Just like I don’t buy the little rebellion he has towards the end. Yes, teenagers are moody, selfish, and self-absorbed, but they aren’t stupid. They know right from wrong, and they certainly know when to listen, especially when it comes to life or death situations. Miles simply doesn’t feel like an authentic teen voice.

The other thing I struggled with is this idea that Cole and Miles MUST get to their home in South Africa to avoid the issues facing the few remaining men in the United States. There is nothing to indicate to the reader that life in South Africa is better for men than it is in the U.S. Other than the fact that she is a South African citizen and would have more rights than she does remaining in the U.S., we know nothing about what is occurring there to make us believe that Miles will be safer. I get why she wants to flee, but Ms. Beukes does not convince me that it is the right decision.

This idea of seeing a world without most of its men and seeing the women adapt is intriguing, and one that Ms. Beukes executes really well. We get to see how industries struggle to adjust to the fact that most of their employees and executives were men. Also, we see women mourn the idea of not becoming a mother and adjust their ideas of relationships. Plus, she does an amazing job of showing how close society comes to collapsing, as women around the globe watch their husbands, fathers, and sons die, but doesn’t.

Afterland is okay, but not Ms. Beukes’ best. The characters are weak and lack development. While the world-building is great, the rest of the story struggles to find its cohesion. Better luck next time.

It felt like her modern day take on The Stand, but in a completely original way. I loved...well not loved because I would be one of the men affected by the flu, but the world she created without men was fascinating, adding faux masculinity to a world that no has and needs men. It felt very Margaret Atwood as well as Naomi Alderman's The Power. Lauren always has written fascinating books and I've been a fan for a long time.

QUICK TAKE: I am a huge fan of post-apocalyptic stories, and I was really looking forward to this story about a woman and her son trying to return home in a world where a majority of the male population has died off due to a mysterious disease. While I enjoyed the family relationships, I would have loved a little more world-building; as it was written, the story is a bit insular. That being said, if you're a fan of the genre, I think there's a lot that you will enjoy.

Of the Beukes books I've read, I've loved Zoo City, thought Shining Girls was fine, and didn't finish Broken Monsters. Here's another one I didn't end up finishing- I'm wondering if this author is going a different direction from what I like to read.

I think that part of the problem is that there is a LOT of apocalyptic fiction out there right now and this book didn't stand out as anything special. I'm sure that Beukes never planned on releasing her book during an actual pandemic (2020 COVID19), so bad luck there. But I've read better apocalyptic fiction and better fiction that explores gender.

Cole and her son Miles are trying to get back to South Africa from the USA. Cole's sister Billie helped them break out of a government facility because her plan was to get Miles to "donate" some sperm for her evil boss to sell on the black market. A flu-like disease has ended up causing most men (90% or more) to die quickly of prostate cancer, but Miles is immune. For somewhat vague reasons, the whole world has put all reproduction on hold until a cure is found, but we all know how well people respond to government public health mandates, don't we. (At least in the USA.)

So, the backstory is interesting. But not much got explained about the disease itself, and I didn't feel like much about gender got explored in the end either. Miles is disguised as a girl, but this doesn't seem to have much of an impact on him. Cole is just thinking about the next thing, and she's not very introspective about the whole situation either. So it ends up being a standard chase novel, without examining the details of the world that Beukes is positing. I also HATED Billie's chapters. She's fighting a mighty concussion and is the worst person ever. Maybe Beukes was trying to gender-flip a bad guy to make a point,but I already know that women can be bad, because women are JUST PEOPLE, just like men. If you start from a point that humans will act like humans whether male, female, or intersex, then flipping genders on standard tropes doesn't end up feeling all that revelatory to me.

So, the world, which could have been interesting, didn't get explored much. Cole and Miles, for all you the reader are inside their heads, don't seem all that interesting. And soooo many flashbacks! In a time travel novel like Shining Girls, I get this. But this device is getting so overused now! It just jerks the story around, creates false tension, and is a cheap way to do shocking reveals, IMO. I'm really over it.

I've enjoyed some apocalypse novels,although it's not really my jam. I also like novels that examine gender. Novels like these go all the way back to The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri Tepper , the Holdfast Chronicles by Suzy McKee Charnas and much further, and I end up reading them a lot. Recently, the Book of the Unnamed Midwife did a really interesting job of examining gender during an apocalypse. The Handmaid's Tale is an obvious classic. This book felt like a missed opportunity, skimming the surface in order to keep the characters on the run, instead of delving into what really makes transformative change interesting.


READING PROGRESS

AFTERLAND is certainly a surreal read given the current landscape we find ourselves in. Granted the virus and the subsequent fallout in this book is more drastic than Covid-19, but I found myself finding quite a bit to relate to. Add that to my love of one of Beuke's previous books, Broken Monsters, plus my love of all things apocalyptic (in fiction), and this book had all the makings of something I could love.

I enjoyed the characters Beuke's created - they are well developed and the act/react in ways which make sense for the characters I came to know. There were some definite heart-wrenching moments I experienced as she described what Miles and Cole had to go through first as this virus took over the world and then as they navigated their way through everything else.

I think this book is good. While I didn't fall in love with it and at times struggled to keep going, I still enjoy Beuke's writing and I think others will enjoy it. I will read more from this author.